Georgia court strikes down use of electric chair

ATLANTA -- Georgia's highest court struck down the use of the
electric chair Friday, saying the ghastly injuries inflicted and
the risk of "excruciating pain" violate the state constitution's
ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The 4-3 ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court leaves Alabama and
Nebraska as the only states with the electric chair as the sole
method of execution. A few states that once relied exclusively on
the chair now offer condemned inmates a choice of electrocution or
lethal injection.

The ruling is believed to be the first time a state's highest
court has struck down use of the electric chair as cruel and
unusual.

With the decision, Georgia automatically switched to lethal
injection for the 128 men and one woman on death row, as well as
those sentenced to death in the future.

The court said electrocution "inflicts purposeless physical
violence and needless mutilation." The justices criticized the
electric chair for its "specter of excruciating pain and its
certainty of cooked brains and blistered bodies," especially since
most states have switched to lethal injection, a procedure the
court called "less painful, less barbarous."

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to turn away an
Alabama case challenging the electric chair, but it remained
unclear whether the court would use some other case to review the
legitimacy of electrocutions.

The Georgia Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment"
is almost identical in its wording to the one in the U.S.
Constitution.

"This decision ends the degrading spectacle of smoke, fire and
burning flesh that almost every other modern society in the world
has abandoned," said Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for
Human Rights, who argued against electrocution before the Georgia
court.

Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, whose office fought to
preserve electrocution, said that he would not appeal the ruling
but that he felt the court was substituting its opinion "for the
will of the people of Georgia."

Georgia has used the electric chair since 1924, when it replaced
hanging. A total of 441 people have been put to death in the chair,
the last in 1998 when 39-year-old David Loomis Cargill was
electrocuted for the armed robberies and murders of a couple in
1985.

The Legislature, anticipating Friday's ruling, had set lethal
injection as the penalty for capital crimes committed after May 1,
2000, but left electrocution in place for those already under death
penalty. However, the law provided an automatic switch to lethal
injection if electrocution was ruled illegal.

The court's majority cited that legislation as a sign of an
evolving consensus in Georgia against the electric chair. The
court's three dissenters, however, said the majority opinion
represented only "the evolving opinions of the majority members of
this court."

During arguments before the court, the state cited expert
opinions that electrocution brings immediate unconsciousness.
Bright and others cited their own experts who said those undergoing
electrocution could be conscious for some time.

The court said it could not determine conclusively whether the
electric chair inflicts unnecessary pain, but added, "We cannot
ignore the cruelty inherent in punishments that unnecessarily
mutilate or disfigure the condemned prisoner's body."

While the court left capital punishment in Georgia intact,
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, said the death penalty will face more challenges.

"I think it is part of a larger debate in which people are
voicing unease about the death penalty," he said. "The method is
somewhat secondary."

That opinion was shared by state Sen. Sonny Perdue, a Republican
from conservative middle Georgia.

"Unfortunately I think we've seen indications for some time now
that our Supreme Court has a distaste for -- I believe -- the death
penalty, not just for execution by the electric chair," Perdue
said.

Corrections Department spokesman Mike Light said the death
chamber at the state prison near Jackson about 40 miles from
Atlanta has been retrofitted for injection, and "we are fully
prepared to carry out the order of the courts."